The regular season is irrelevant.
That’s the message the Toronto Raptors sent Friday when they fired Dwane Casey
Jalyn Holmes Jersey , two days after his now-former peers in the NBA said he did the best coaching job in the league this season. Casey led the Raptors to the
No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference this season, along with the second-best
record in the league. He even got to coach in the All-Star game.
Didn’t matter.
Swept in the playoffs, swept out of Toronto.
The Raptors were good this season. They weren’t great. And they can’t beat LeBron James, who has engineered the ouster of Toronto now in each of the last
three seasons, the last two of them being sweeps. So Casey paid the price, and
with that comes the reminder: Winning isn’t enough in this NBA. Coaches must
meet expectations, regardless of how misguided they may be.
”In some ways I think the time has come,” Raptors President Masai Ujiri said Friday, a few hours after telling Casey that he was done in Toronto. ”Sometimes
these things come to an end, relationships come to an end. And we’ll figure out
a way to move on, a new voice, just a new everything in terms of that
position.”
That’s becoming a mantra around the NBA. Last summer
Philip Rivers Jersey , all 30 coaches kept their jobs. Next season on opening night, there will be at least nine coaches in roles they didn’t have 365
days earlier.
Lloyd Pierce will be one of them after the Atlanta Hawks gave him his first head coaching job in the NBA on Friday. The former Philadelphia and Memphis
assistant replaces Mike Budenholzer, who left last month after the Hawks
finished 24-58.
And there are some great names out there: Stan Van Gundy was let go in what seems to have been a power struggle in Detroit. Frank Vogel is a proven coach
who didn’t have much talent to work with in Orlando. Jeff Hornacek had a deeply
flawed roster in New York. Steve Clifford is brilliant, and that couldn’t keep
him in Charlotte. Budenholzer was the coach of the year in 2015, and he and
Atlanta apparently stopped seeing eye-to-eye on enough things.
Casey now joins them in the unemployed club.
Let’s be clear: Casey was flawed in the East semifinals when James and the Cavaliers won 4-0. There were some peculiar decisions late in Game 1 when
Toronto fell in overtime, and no resistance in two games that became blowouts.
Casey should have done better, and he shouldn’t have offered an end-of-series
series assessment that essentially was him saying the rest of the East is
helpless until James isn’t great anymore.
So Casey had a couple subpar days.
Most days this season, he was brilliant. The National Basketball Coaches Association – the 30 NBA coaches – picked him as their coach of the year, in
large part because of the way he took an already-good Toronto offense, changed
it mightily and made it better. A high-risk move, and it paid high dividends.
Casey’s peers clearly respected that.
The NBA coach of the year award comes out next month, after The Finals. That’s picked by a panel of media who cover the league. Casey very likely will
win that award as well.
Even Ujiri kept lauding Casey on Friday: Good man. Good coach. Classy person.
Aren’t those tough to find?
Dumping a coach after a top-seeded season is rare
Trey Flowers Jersey , but not unprecedented. Cleveland fired Mike Brown in 2010 and wound up losing James to Miami anyway a few weeks later. Rick Carlisle got
Detroit to the No. 1 seed in 2003, then got fired and replaced by Larry Brown –
who led the Pistons to the 2004 NBA title.
Others have left of their own accord: Pat Riley with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1990, Phil Jackson in Chicago in 1998, Larry Bird in Indiana in 2000. Bird
also fired Isiah Thomas as Pacers’ coach in 2003, a few months after Thomas
coached in the All-Star Game.
Some of those moves worked out, others not so much.
Ujiri will have good options. Jerry Stackhouse has shown the franchise plenty as coach of the Raptors’ G League team. Many around the NBA are thinking the
time is right for Monty Williams to get back on the sideline. It’s only a matter
of time before San Antonio assistant Ettore Messina gets his chance to run a
club.
Whoever gets the gig in Toronto, and any of the other open NBA jobs, will surely understand the new reality. Good isn’t good enough anymore.
—
Tim Reynolds is a national basketball writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at treynolds(at)ap.org
—
Several prominent players across the NFL have skipped mandatory minicamps this week, subjecting themselves to team fines out of concern for their contract
status in a league where so little is guaranteed.
Everyone is accounted for in Minnesota, where good vibes from the top of the organization to the bottom of the roster can only help the Vikings in their
attempt to better their NFC championship game appearance from last season.
”All these guys, they like to be around each other. So I think that’s part of it,” coach Mike Zimmer said. ”We’ve got a lot of really good guys on this
football team who care about not just them
Andre Branch Jersey , but they care about each other. It’s kind of just the way we do things.”
Savvy salary cap management steered by executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski has allowed the Vikings to put the majority of their
stars in mutually beneficial multi-year deals, but outside linebacker Anthony
Barr, wide receiver Stefon Diggs and defensive end Danielle Hunter have all
entered 2018 on expiring contracts that must be addressed soon unless the
Vikings are willing to let them become free agents and potentially price the
club out on the open market.
Still, all three of them have been practicing with the team this week, clearly confident enough in their future earnings to opt for full participation
over mild protest. Barr, for his part, missed one week of organized team
activities last month, an absence he said was to secure an insurance policy in
case of a severe injury that would derail the value of his next deal. He said
recently his hope was to have a new contract in place by the beginning of
on-field workouts in May, but that’s the closest anyone has come to even hinting
about dissatisfaction.
Barr is among the 2014 first-round draft picks who’ve reached their first career crossroad, playing the fifth option year that the majority of teams have
exercised for cost control. Then there are the post-first round 2015 picks such
as Hunter and Diggs who’ve entered the fourth season of their rookie deals.
Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell, Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, Arizona Cardinals running back David Johnson
Leonte Carroo Jersey , Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones, Tennessee Titans left tackle Taylor Lewan and Oakland Raiders defensive end
Khalil Mack have created headlines around the league for staying home this week
from minicamp.
”My job is to come in to work, just like you come in to work the same way,” Hunter said. ”My job is to come in and get on this field and play football.”
Clearly, he’s been listening to the head coach, as have many of his teammates.
”That’s one thing Zim has taught us since he’s been here: No one player is more important than the team,” Hunter said. ”So I guess that kind of grew into
the program. The team is way bigger than one person. In order to help the team,
you’ve got to do your job. And we want to be great. We want to be where we need
to be. Last year, it wasn’t close to that, so we’ve got to work for that
again.”
—
Authentic Womens Vinny Curry Jersey
